Barking dogs helped save the life of an 82-year-old woman after a blaze tore through a farmhouse in Peckleton.

The fire started at The Granary in Manor Road, Peckleton, shortly after 3am on Wednesday.

The two-storey house was empty at the time because Michael Palmer and his two sons were overseas, but his mother, Jane, was fast asleep in an adjoining house.

Luckily, the huge flames that burst through the roof of The Granary were spotted by three dogs belonging to Jane’s other son, Marcus, who lives about 50 yards away in The Manor, with his wife and children.

Marcus said dogs Tiggy, Kimba and Izzy raised the alarm, enabling them to rescue Jane.

He said: “Our dogs started barking and woke us up. Our daughter looked out of the window to see the house well ablaze and we called the fire brigade.

“We went in and rescued my mother, who’s 82.”

He said the firefighters arrived within about eight minutes and set up a fire break to stop the fire spreading, saving Jane’s house.

He said: “The speed the fire was moving was scary.

“It would have got to my mum’s house pretty quickly, I think. It’s all down to the dogs.

“If it hadn’t been for them it would have been a lot worse.

“Animals have that sense that something is wrong, luckily.

“No one was injured at all.”

Marcus called his brother to tell him about the fire. Marcus said: “He told me to dig out the insurance documents from his house.

“I said, ‘I can’t. It’s gutted the place’.

“He’s still very shocked and it’s going to be shocking for him to see it.

“It’s soul-destroying when something like this happens - it’s everything you own.”

At the peak of the fire, there were five pumps on the scene, with firefighters from Leicester, Hinckley and Market Bosworth fought the flames using compressed foam extinguishers and water hoses high up on aerial ladders.

Crews were still at the scene at 11.30am, damping down the remains of the property.